Hospital and Church of Jesús Nazareno

You're standing before the church of Jesús Nazareno and the hospital of the same name, one of the oldest on the continent still in operation. Behind this plain façade lay a secret that kept historians guessing for more than a century: this is where the bones of Hernán Cortés rest.

1The conquistador's hospital

Cortés founded the hospital in the 1520s, and it has been caring for the sick for almost five centuries. According to a much-repeated tradition, this is where Cortés and Moctezuma II first met, on 8 November 1519; a plaque marks it, although the exact spot of the meeting cannot be proved.

2Wandering bones

Cortés died in 1547 near Seville, and his remains were moved several times before reaching Mexico. In 1794 they were placed in this church, in a mausoleum with a bust designed by Manuel Tolsá. After independence, hostility towards the conquistador raised fears that the tomb would be desecrated, and in 1823 the politician Lucas Alamán secretly hid the bones, while the rumour was spread that they had left the country. Years later he moved them to another hiding place in the same church and recorded it all in an affidavit that ended up, never made public, in the hands of Spanish diplomats.

In November 1946, thanks to a copy of that document, a group of historians opened a niche in the church wall and found the urn.

The remains are still here, beside the high altar, marked by a simple plaque. On the vault above the choir, José Clemente Orozco painted an unsettling "Apocalypse" between 1942 and 1944.

3What to look for

• The church doorway, plain, in grey stone.
• The commemorative plaque for the meeting of Cortés and Moctezuma, on the walls of the complex.
• The working hospital: people come and go, as they have for five centuries.